When I have been out of the country with American ex-pats, the songs that seem to tug best are ones that here in the US seem so common, even trite: Red River Valley, Home on the Range, Down in the Valley. They are songs that almost every American knows, at least partially. When you are up a jungle river with a bunch of homesick American anthropologists, these are the songs that they respond to.

Congratulations on your discovery of The Carter Family. They lie at the roots of American country music.

Sourdough Petaluma, CA